Reviewing CCCC 2000: Tripled Essay Writing Draft 1

He wasn't, as you put it, a "looker," but his attentions made one of you. It's an art everyone acknowledges. How is it done? Something you can learn? Ask him. He knows.

Recently my friends in my writing group agreed that what makes a man truly seductive is his ability to focus on you and you alone. We all go through life (or some of us do) feeling unseen, in a way--and when you (one) feel that someone actually sees you, sees something in you that you knew was there but had never acknowledged, it is almost irresistible. Of course I don't mean it's pleasant to have someone staring at you 24 hours a day or dogging your footsteps--just paying attention.

Love=paying attention=seeing--to write well we must pay attention as well. You can't write well if you haven't spent lots of time just starting.

The seduction of good writing is no different then than the seduction of people...readers sense need to sense the thinking on the page is directed at them, into their minds and hearts. I like this idea, that academic lives can be sexy with ideas, and that academic writing should practice seduction of the reader, not practice worship of the writer.

What ideas reach us powerfully? The writing at the beginning implies that the question is the answer. The next stage of academic writing may well be interactivity...that writers more than not will create texts for webs where "critical chat" or email replying is expected. The text may seduce by focusing interest, but sustaining the relationship may be the result of ideas...of questioning, answering, and more questioning.

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